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"Violetta's waltz," she said. "Just hold on to me for a little while, will you?"
It seems he slept, or sank into some sort of approximate peaceful state, his fingers on her sweaty adorable little neck, and his lips pressed to her forehead. But then the doorbell sounded, and he heard Eugenia in the hall, taking her time to answer, talking aloud as she always did, "On my way, I'm comin'."
The report had been delivered. He had to see it. How to get it without revealing the sleeping child on the rug, he didn't know. But he had to see it. It hadn't taken a half hour for that file to get here. He thought of Rowan and he felt such dread that he couldn't form words about it, or make decisions, or even reflect.
He sat up, trying to regain his strength, to shake off the languor of sex, and not see this naked girl on the carpet asleep, head cradled on a nest of her own red hair, her belly as smooth and perfect as her breasts, all of her luscious and inviting to him. Michael, you pig, that you could do this!
There was the dull vibration of the big front door slamming shut. Eugenia passed again, steady tread, silence.
He put on his clothes, and then combed his hair. He was staring at the phonograph. Yes, that was exactly the one he had seen in the living room, the one which had played for him the ghost waltz. And there sat the black disk on which the ghost waltz had been recorded many decades ago!
He was confounded for a moment. Trying to keep his eyes off the gleaming child, pondering and wondering that for a moment he had gone calm in the midst of all of it. But you did this. You could not stay at top pitch every moment. And so he thought, My wife may be alive; she may be dead; but I have to believe she's alive! And she's with that thing. That thing must need her!
Mona turned over. Her back was flawless and white, her hips for all their smallness proportioned like those of a little woman. Nothing boyish about her in her youth; resolutely female.
Tear your eyes off her, man. Eugenia and Henri are both around somewhere. You are pushing your luck. You are asking to be bricked up in the cellar.
There is no cellar.
I know that. Well, then the attic.
He opened the door slowly. Silence in the big hall. Silence in the double parlor. But there was the envelope on the hall table--where all mail and deliveries were placed. He could see the familiar embossed name of Mayfair and Mayfair. He tiptoed out, took the envelope, fearful that any moment Eugenia or Henri would appear, and then he went into the dining room. He could sit at the head of the table and read the thing, and that way, if anybody went near that library door, he could stop them.
Sooner or later, she would wake up and get dressed. And then? He didn't know. He just hoped she didn't go home, that she didn't leave him here.
Rotten coward, he thought. Rowan, would you understand all this? Funny thing was, Rowan might. Rowan understood men, better than any woman he'd ever known, even Mona.
He switched on the floor lamp by the fireplace, then sat down at the head of the table and removed the packet of Xeroxes from the envelope.
It was pretty much what they'd told him.
The geneticists in New York and Europe had gotten a bit sarcastic about the specimens. "This seems to be a calculated combination of genetic material from more than one primate species."
It was the eyewitness material from Donnelaith that killed him. "The woman was sick. She stayed in her room most of the time. But when he went out, she went with him. It was as if he insisted she go. She looked sick, very sick. I almost suggested that she see a physician."
At one point, in Geneva, Rowan was described by a hotel clerk as being an emaciated woman of perhaps 120 pounds. He found that horrifying.
He stared at the Xeroxes of the forged checks. Forgery! It wasn't even good. It was a great old-fashioned Elizabethan hand, by God, like something out of a parchment document.
Payee: Oscar Aldrich Tamen.
Why had he chosen that name? When Michael looked on the back of the check he realized. Fake passport. The bank clerk had written down all the information.
Surely they were following up that lead. Then he saw the law firm memorandum. Oscar Aldrich Tamen had last been seen in New York on February 13th. Wife reported him missing on February 16th. Whereabouts unknown. Conclusion? Stolen passport.
He slapped shut the manila folder. He put his hands up and leaned on them, and tried not to feel that little twinge in his heart, or to remind himself that it was very small, the pain, no more than a little nag, and he'd had it before, for years, hadn't he?
"Rowan," he said aloud as if it were a prayer. His thoughts went back to Christmas Day, to that last glimpse of her when she had torn the chain off his neck, and the medal had fallen.
Why did you leave me? How could you!
And then a terrible shame came over him, a shame and a fear. He'd been glad in his selfish little heart when they told him that demon thing had forced her, glad the investigators thought she was coerced! Glad that this had been declared in front of proud Ryan Mayfair. Ah, this meant his wily bride had not cuckolded him with the devil! She loved him!
And what in God's name did this mean for her! For her safety, her fate, her fortune! Lord God, you selfish and despicable man, he thought. But the pain was so great, the pain of her going that day, the pain of the icy water of the pool, and the Mayfair Witches in his dream, and the hospital room, and the pain in his heart when he'd first climbed the stairs--
He folded his arms on the table in front of him, and, weeping silently, laid his head down against it.
He did not know how much time had passed. He knew everything, however. That the library door had not opened, and that Mona must still be asleep, and that his servants knew what he'd done, or else they would have been hovering around him. That twilight had come. That the house was waiting for something, or witnessing something.
Finally he sat back and saw that the light outside was that shining white of spring evenings, making all the leaves distinct, and that the golden light of the lamp gave a little cheer to the vast room with its old paintings.
A tiny voice reached his ears, singing, thin, distant. And gradually as he sat very still, he realized it was Violetta's song, on the gramophone. This meant his nymph had waked; she was about, winding the old toy. He must rouse himself. He must talk to her about these mortal sins.
He stood up and made his way slowly through the shadowy room, and to the library. The music came strongly through the door, the happy song of Violetta from La Traviata. The waltz they'd played when Violetta was strong and gay, before she began to die so wondrously in operatic fashion. Light came from beneath the door, golden and soft.
She sat on the floor, half risen more or less, resting back on her hands, naked as before, her breasts loose but high placed and the color of baby skin. The nipples the pink of baby's nipples.
There was no music. Had it been some trick of noise? She was staring at the window to the cast-iron porch outside. And Michael saw that it was open. It was what they called a pocket window, and the sash had been thrown up all the way to make a doorway out of it. The shutters, which he had kept closed all the time himself, rather liking to see slats of afternoon sun, were open, too. A loud noise sounded in the street, but it was only a
passing car, jetting too fast through the narrow shadowy intersection.
She was startled; her hair was mussed, her face still smooth with lingering sleep.
"What is this?" he said. "Someone came in that window?"
"Tried to come," she said. Her voice was foggy with sleep.
"Do you smell that smell?" She turned and looked at him, and before he could make an answer, she started to dress.
Michael went to the window and cranked shut the green blinds immediately. The corner beyond stood deserted or so dark beneath the oaks that it might as well have been. The mercury street lamp was like a moon face snared in the branches above. Michael brought down the sash, and turned the lock. Should have been locked all the time! He was furious.
"Do you smell it?" she said. She was dressed when he turned around. The room was all shadows now that he had shut out the corner light. She came to him and turned her back for him to tie her cotton sash.
"Goddamnit, who was it?" The stiff starched cotton felt good to his fingers. He tied the sash as best he could, having never done this for a little girl before, trying to make the bow pretty when he was finished with it. She turned around, staring past him at the window.
"You don't catch that scent, do you?" She went past him and peered through the glass, through the slats. Then she shook her head.
"You didn't see who it was, did you?" He had half a mind to go out there, charging through the garden, and around the block, to accost whatever strangers he might find, to search up Chestnut Street and down First until he found some suspicious person. "My hammer, I need it," he said.
"Your hammer?"
"I don't use a gun, honey. My hammer's always been good enough." He went to the hall closet.
"Michael, the person's long gone. He was gone when I woke up. I heard him running away. I don't think...I don't know that he knew there was anyone in here."
He came back. Something white was shining on the dark carpet. Her ribbon. He picked it up and absently she took it from him and fixed it in her hair with no need of a mirror.
"I've got to go," she said. "I gotta go see my mother, CeeCee, I should have gone before now. She's probably scared to death that she's in a hospital."
